Tennessee’s match-up with No. 11 Kentucky this Saturday is turning out to be a big recruiting weekend for the Vols. There are several big time targets on UT’s 2019 board who are supposed to be coming in and visiting on Saturday, and one of the Vols’ highest-rated targets in this cycle just announced he’ll be visiting too.
Quavaris Crouch is a five-star athlete out of Charlotte, North Carolina. And according to Jesse Simonton of Volquest, one of the nation’s top athletes in the 2019 class is planning on visiting UT this weekend.
NEWS: Tennessee is slated to host 5-star ATH Quavaris Crouch on an official visit this weekend, per @RivalsFriedman.
Crouch won’t be the only big time blue-chipper on campus this weekend either. Stay tuned.
— Jesse Simonton (@JesseReSimonton) November 8, 2018
According to the 247Sports Composite rankings, Crouch is the No. 28 overall player, No. 2 athlete, and No. 1 player in the state of North Carolina in the 2019 class. Clemson, Michigan, and Florida State have all been gaining momentum with Crouch lately, and he’s recently visited all three of those schools.
We looked at who the Vols are working the hardest to flip from other schools in the 2019 class in our latest post on RTI Premium!
Tennessee’s coaches have developed a strong relationship with Crouch, and this will be the fifth time he’s visited the Vols this year. He visited UT’s campus at least three times in the first six months of this year, and he also was in attendance for the Vols’ game against West Virginia to start the season since the game was being played in his hometown.
Crouch plays both running back and linebacker in high school, and he’s been wildly successful at both. But with his size and style of play, he may project better at linebacker in college. He’s already almost 6-foot-3, 240 pounds, and he could add even more muscle and mass to his frame once he gets to college. But he’ll likely get a chance to play at either position, and it seems like the five-star athlete may prefer playing on defense in college.
Looking at his film, it’s easy to see why analysts and coaches love Crouch. He tough as nails on both sides of the ball and has exceptional speed for a linebacker and is very fast for his size as a running back too. He’s explosive on defense and is extremely hard to bring down on offense. Even if he switches to defense as his primary position in college, he should still get some “beast package” carries on offense because of how effective he is as a runner too.
As a junior, Crouch nearly set a record for most rushing yards in a single season in the county he plays in. Last year, he ran for 3,283 yards and 33 touchdowns, and that included a performance in which he totaled 334 yards on just 21 carries. That performance was good enough for the 14th-most yards in a single game in Mecklenburg County history. The record for the most rushing yards in a single season in county history came from Elijah Hood in 2013 when he ran for 3,609 yards. Hood went on to have a successful career with North Carolina in college and is now on the Oakland Raiders roster in the NFL.
But as stated above, Crouch doesn’t just play running back. He also plays linebacker for Harding, and even in his more limited time on defense he still totaled 48 tackles and 14 sacks.
In his senior year, Crouch suffered a minor injury while playing running back and has played sparingly so as not to re-aggravate that injury or worsen it. But he’s still getting plenty of attention from top programs around the country.
Crouch’s recruitment has been all over the place, and he’s one of the more difficult prospects to gauge in the 2019 class. But Tennessee getting him on campus for a fourth time this year and getting him to come for an official visit is great news for the Vols, and they have to like the spot they’re in with him.
